Pan crossed her arms and waited for the shuttle to land. Wind pushed her straight black hair off her shoulders. She tried to ignore it, but so much hair got in her face, she had to do something. She pulled the hair out of her eyes and gathered up the whole lot in one hand. She could finally read the shuttle.

Flowing script on the hull pronounced it: Shuttle 2067. The one she waited for: Aria’s shuttle. A simple painting of a tree crept up the shuttle’s side, surrounded by a circle of runes.

Pan liked the navy symbol – a representation of Scaldigir – a combination of the Mother Tree and the mysterious rune circles that played a role in Scaldigir’s past, as the symbols of the alien visitors who crash-landed and brought powers to the Scaldin. The circle on the shuttle’s side was one of many unique combinations.

The shuttle was nice, but the person inside was better.

Like Pan, Aria possessed an arcane power. Also, like Pan’s, Aria’s power was unique and soft. It wasn’t flashy. She couldn’t bend objects or elements to her will.

Aria could read auras – the auras of people, and the residue they left on places and things. She got to go into space because that was where the Scaldin needed her most, taking the measure of alien species. Alien auras could be read easier than their faces.

Unfortunately for Aria, aura reading involved a trade-off, larger than most arcane powers called for. The auras that Aria could see both enhanced and obscured her vision. She saw people’s personalities and feelings, but she saw fewer of their physical details. Aria knew people by their colors not their faces.

As the shuttle landed, Pan backed up. She put her hands over her ears. A gentle wind ruffled her light dress. It glittered, as if a keeper of starlight. Of course, that would be lost on Aria.

Aria would see only Pan’s aura. Maybe, Aria would see the grey of Pan’s face against the black of her hair, but Pan’s aura always drew Aria’s eye more.

The shuttle door opened. Several men and two women exited. None were Aria. Of course, Aria let them all go first. Pan tapped her foot and waited. She waited and waited. Finally, Aria disembarked.

“Oh, you look annoyed. Already?” Aria approached Pan.

Pan dropped her hands to her sides. She took a deep breath. “I’m not annoyed. I’m happy to see you.”

Aria smiled. Black curls twisted around her face, loosely coiled. Aria wore her hair long, very long. The length pulled her curls down, tempering their spring. Aria also liked to wear pink, and Pan saw that Aria had on a dress of lace flowers in just that color.

Most Scaldin liked to wear flowers, even the men – in some capacity. It reminded them of home.

“Did you miss it here? Miss me?” Pan asked.

“Yes, I missed here very much.” Aria glanced behind her and waved to a couple of navy officers. She turned back to Pan. “Sorry about the wait. Were you here long?”

Pan shook her head. Then, she nodded. “Sotir wasn’t precise when he told me the time. He just said the tenth hour. You know, stereotypical fortune teller talk.”

Aria cocked her head and turned her feet towards home. “Your messages mention Sotir a lot. Have you been spending that much time with him?”

Pan stiffened. She followed Aria and tried to relax. Nothing would come of it, why not have some fun? She could probably paint the relationship in a way that worried Aria as much as Aria’s constant travel worried Pan.

Pan smiled. “I see him almost every day, and on the days I don’t see him, he sees me.” Pan pretended to clean one of her nails.

Aria sighed. “You won’t fool me. I see you in lavender, making mischief. I take it, you’re exaggerating.”

Pan continued to smile. “I do see him almost every day.”

Days with Sotir were the best days. They took walks. They talked about shows, jobs, and other interests.

Aria drew a sharp breath. “Pan…”

Pan narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Let’s change the subject,” Aria said.

Pan nodded. She wondered if her aura showed Aria some secret emotion of hers. Perhaps, the truth. Pan hadn’t lied about the time she spent with Sotir. That would be enough to bother Aria, rule-loving Aria.

Pan rounded the sidewalk and turned on to a wide avenue.

No cars could travel down the avenue, just pedestrians. Poles blocked trucks from entering, but Pan doubted the poles could stop a determined car. A small vehicle could slip right through. For that reason, Pan liked to stick to the sidewalk. She’d heard enough stories about accidental vehicle deaths – from the very people who perished in them.

The avenue got special treatment because it led to the Arcane complex.

Aria stepped into the avenue. She didn’t keep to the sidewalk. Whether she strode down the middle because she couldn’t see well, or whether she just didn’t think it was all that dangerous, the result was the same.

Pan tried to grab Aria and tug her back to the sidewalk. She missed.

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Aria laughed. “What did I miss while I was gone?”

“Not much.” Pan swept a hand over the Scaldin-made landscape as it turned from stone to nature. “Start of spring. Oh, and they cleaned the walk.”

The sidewalk gleamed. Pan always thought it was as grey as Scaldin skin – not so. It was sparkling white, like the hair of some older Scaldin and a few young individuals. Flowers, shrubs, and a handful of trees caught the breeze. They swayed, waving their small buds and blossoms.

Aria looked down at the walk. “I can’t tell about the stone. It’s just a cloud of auras.” Aria raised her eyes and studied the view side to side. “The plants are just starting to wake up. They’re putting out a lot of light. Spring is looking good.”

“Spring is…” Pan spotted the tree that she and Sotir had stopped under, when he asked her to live with him. She glanced at Aria and worried her aura betrayed her with its colors.

But, Aria looked skyward. “I’ve had a good adventure. I got to see a little of space before I came home.” Aria smiled. “The captain quarantined a window, and the auras faded. It wasn’t perfect, but I saw some stars.”

Aria couldn’t see out windows, those of spacecraft included. The glass held the auras of all the people that passed or looked through. It was a rare window Aria could see through.

“That’s nice,” Pan said.

“What’s wrong?”

Pan shrugged. “Nothing.”

“You’ve gone all grey and blue.” Aria frowned. “I wish you could see space, Pan. I really do.”

“I’ve seen it once or twice. That’s enough for me.” Pan tempered her relief. She wanted Aria to think she yearned for space, not some man. “You don’t see much of space either, and you go every other week.”

Aria went quiet.

Pan waved her hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Aria stood tall and stiff. She started to walk to the complex door alone.

Pan ran to join her. “Things could be much worse. You could see ghost people. You could be…” Totally blind. Oh, don’t say that. That won’t make things better.

Aria nodded. She stayed quiet, but she let Pan walk beside her.

It seemed every arcane power had a downside. Hard powers – those that could manipulate physical objects – raged when they manifested themselves. At the onset of puberty, fire starters started involuntary fires. Ice shapers froze droplets of water in the air. Telekinetics floated entire roomfuls of junk. With time, they got their powers under control, but during sleep and sickness, little bouts of lost control cropped up.

Soft powers came with a different kind of downside. They couldn’t be shut off. They posed fewer issues of control, but they invaded every aspect of life. Pan would always see ghosts. It affected her sight. Aria would always see auras; her sight took quite the hit. Sotir would always look into the past and future. He could control that to some degree, more and more as time went on, but his sight would ever remain a slave to forward and backward facing views.

Aria inhaled and exhaled. “What was your job this week?”

Pan perked up. “An interesting one. There was a cannibal. He murdered his friend, but his friend didn’t get a good look at him. Long story short – I hung around the ghost, we got chased by the cannibal, and then, we saved ourselves.” Pan smiled. “Simple.”

Aria’s eyes widened. “You got chased by a cannibal? Pan, I should see a lot more yellow on you when you say that.”

“It’s past.” Pan paused on the steps. “That reminds me. It wasn’t a case, but this ghost actually scared me.” Pan pulled a paper from her dress and handed it to Aria.

“You drew it?” Aria asked.

Aria couldn’t see the lines of two-dimensional art. They lay under aural residues, left by the artist.

Pan nodded. “I did.”

“I just see yellow. I guess you were scared.” Aria smirked.

Pan grinned. “I used up all my fear in that situation. Fear is a finite resource, you know.”

Aria put her hand on the door knob. “For some people.” She pulled the door open and held it for Pan.

Pan strolled to the entrance. “Someday, I’m going to draw something you can see.”

Aria smiled a little. “Well, when the day comes that you discover this new method of art, can you draw something nice? Something in color? I’d rather have that than the monsters.”

Something in color. Pan knit her brow. Slowly, she stepped inside the complex. “So, what was your job?”

“There’s a new species in the neighborhood who wants to trade with us. They’re kind of difficult to read…” Aria trailed off.

“For you or everyone else?”

“Both, but more so everyone else. Most of them had a green aura, which usually means they’re friendly and open, but this shade was kind of sickly. I got the impression that they might actually be sick or very different from us in regards to morals.” Aria sighed. “Long story short – we’re going to trade with them but very warily.” Aria squinted. “What’s going on?”

Pan frowned. She looked beyond the coat room.

A few young arcane girls ran back and forth in front of the entryway. The atrium seemed crowded.

Pan stepped closer. “Memorial. To mark one-hundred years since the reapers…” Pan shuffled her feet and looked down. Finally, she raised her eyes to Aria’s. “Well…since the reapers killed a bunch of arcanes.”

Aria frowned and nodded slow.

“We’re going to commemorate that, I suppose.” Pan stared into the crowd. She could feel Aria’s eyes on her.

“A nice homecoming for me,” Aria said, with a hint of sarcasm.

Pan gestured to the preparations. “I think so. There’s somber decorations. All four of our esteemed mentors – if we could ever call them that…”

Aria hit Pan’s arm.

Pan smiled. “You’re right. I should rephrase, all four of our long absent role models. Much more accurate.”

Every young arcane possessed four assigned mentors to help them learn their craft and navigate life. As arcanes aged from their teens to their twenties, the mentors gradually stepped back. Pan thought that their four mentors took one giant step back after a couple of months, and she knew that Aria thought the same.

They abandoned Pan and Aria, and Pan and Aria hadn’t relied on them for years. Assignments came from mentors. The mentors debriefed them, but no one chaperoned Aria and Pan. No one discussed detailed strategy. No one ever had, and that was the truth.

Aria didn’t object to the second characterization. She’d probably given up.

Pan peered deeper into the room and stared.

Aria stepped forward. “We should help set up.”

Pan grabbed Aria’s arm. “Wait a minute. No one’s seen us. We can turn around, have a good morning, and come back when everything’s ready for the speeches and cheese platters and whatever else this memorial entails.”

Aria pulled her arm free and caught Pan’s eyes. “I know that reaper stuff scares you, but you don’t have to be so irreverent about it.”

Pan frowned. It wasn’t that reapers scared her.

Aria gestured inside. “Now, they weren’t the best mentors, but they’re…” Aria looked into the hall, squinted, and looked away.

“Old women,” Pan finished for her.

Aria rubbed her forehead. “Sort of.”

“Can you even see well?” Pan asked.

Aria turned and headed into the hall. “Let’s just go.”

Pan sighed. She followed. She couldn’t see Aria’s face, but she was certain that Aria squinted against the aural light. A lot of arcanes worked beyond the entryway, and all their auras would flow together.

Pan’s eyes darted around the room. She spotted Chara, her healer mentor. She saw Spyridoula, the woman who could once run faster than a car. Her eyes flicked to Kat, a fire starter, and finally, Pan saw Brynn, the telekinetic.

Pan couldn’t lean on them anymore, but she secretly wanted to. She had the feeling that no one really outgrew mentors. Even a one-hundred-year-old arcane wanted and needed someone to look up to.

As Pan crossed into the commotion, she saw it. A beautiful cake of chocolate sat upon a side table.

Pan gasped. She grabbed Aria. “Cake,” she whispered. “This memorial just got better.”